Your ex isn't the only one stalking your social media posts. The Feds are, too The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has used an AI-powered data-scanning tool called Giant Oak Search Technology (GOST) to scour social media looking for post containing "derogatory" comments about the nation. The GOST database ranks social media scores from one to 100, and is searchable by name, address, email …
I'd never be allowed into the US
I certainly wouldn't be. But that's because I didn't bother to renew my passport when it expired in 2005.. (t'missus doesn't like flying [1] so it seemed pointless to carry on having one when I wasn't travelling for work any more)
[1] Only had two flights with her in 35 years of marriage - our flight to Jersey for our honeymoon and one flight to San Francisco (after the 49ers game that I wanted to see, we took a couple of days to drive up the coast road to Portland, Oregon where my brother lived then flew back Seattle --> Chicago --> London. Some of those back road town looked like they hadn't changed since 1950..)
"ICE and Giant Oak did not respond to The Register's request for comment."
Well, perhaps they did, but not how you think. Perhaps they are in these forums right now?
Am I being paranoid? Almost certainly. Are the GOSTs in the forums with you right now? Can you see them?
Is it feasible that GOST have the resources to write some scripts to downvote posts by people who say things that are "derogatory" towards the US government? Also very possible.
Would they bother with a site as small as The Register? I really don't know. Gut feeling is no. What do people think? (only real people, no government employees allowed to reply)
It's nice to see El Reg actually "biting the hand" for a change. Please keep digging. You could start by going through your web server logs and seeing if certain posts with certain opinions often come from certain IP addresses I guess.
In the last couple of years I've genuinely questioned my sanity as so many people have told me to "trust the experts", "just do what the government says and don't question it" or "shut up and be quiet" or words to that effect on various forums (LinkedIN, NextDoor, etc.) that I've often wondered if they are useful idiots, or working for the government. Some of the replies I've got have often looked like they are written by an AI. Strangely this has not really happened in real life. People are generally reasonable, even if they don't always agree. I've also had several private messages from people who agreed with me, but would not dare to say it publicly (on LinkedIN, NextDoor and slack channels at work) or just didn't want to get into arguments. For example, stating that vaccine mandates were a terrible idea. Had a massive brouhaha about that one!
Next door is the most toxic social media I’ve ever encountered.
These people are meant to be our neighbours yet they are fully abhorrent and full of venom and disgust.
It’s not just my are but across where ever they serve. The Reddit sub for next door is an interesting chuckle but I rarely bother to look at next door anymore, when I do there are lots of people saying they are leaving and why., it’s often down to a few individuals who are often the local mods. The mods recruit other like minded sycophants and turn it into a sewer.
Exactly! I had to leave NextDoor because a local mod would pile on whenever I posted anything which he mildly disagreed with. I deleted my account.
My wife still has hers, but she says it's still full of complaints about noisy cars, dog shit and fireworks. Whenever you try to suggest making some local improvements (which she did) you just get piled on by a few "keyboard warriors" who are borderline abusive, or just plain rude. She had a sensible suggestion about making some improvements to a local road junction recently, and the local papers even picked it up. However a few angry people piled on saying "It's just bad drivers". I'm not sure how the bad drivers know to target this particular junction though. But you can't reason with these people.
Some people just feel they need to fix all the wrong opinions on the internet.
In the hope that GOST or whatever they are calling it now reads this: ICE sucks donkey balls. Come waste your time sniffing my pants.
I'm inclined to like the US.
Agencies that abuse their powers in order to invade our privacy simply because they can make a case for doing it are evil.
This isn't the first example of ICE doing things like this with disregard and impunity
Didn't UK gov admit to closely monitoring social media during the pandemic? Certainly the Aussie police were doing that as they kept showing up at people's houses.
And there was the case of a girl posting rap lyrics online and getting a visit from the po-po as they deemed her post harmful.
This doesn't surprise me one bit about the US as when you apply for an ESTA you have to give all your social media accounts.
Why would they need one, if they already have credit reports?
If I thought for one moment this would be used reasonably it would be fine, but you know it won't.
So, legal visitors get tracked and the million or so that were helped to enter illegally are ok? Will I now be unable to visit the US for this criticism?
Things are getting crazy. IT is putting too much power in the hands of the state.
All this is doing is assuming guilt before innocence and then when they have quotas to fill they can adjust adjust the config to ensnare more suspects.
They don’t see people as people just part of a number on a report.
AI is a scary dangerous thing, like anything nefarious it’ll do as you train it likely with unexpected unknown consequences.
Just like the premise of terminator were the ai in control of the nukes decides the way to win the war is to start it first.
Train ai to find terrorists on social media and it will, once the number on social media dwindle it’ll find others who could potentially maybe future terrorists based on sudo patterns the ai or its programmers think are likely markers.
The big problem is we are being judged without our knowledge or comprehending of what we are consenting to.
Back in 2006 I flew from NZ to the UK, eastwards, with one stop in LA. They got us all off the plane, lined us up, fingerprinted and retina-scanned us (Ok, it was a long time ago, it might just have been one of the two), and then let us back on. WTF? Not even the Chinese did that. That's what you'd expect in Belarus, not the US. Land Of The Free, my arse.
Ok, if you're flying right now, it's a toss-up between a Russian missile and a Yankee anal probe. Difficult.
Here's some stories about how that stuff is being used already in the UK to bar people with unfavourable views on government policies :(
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/sep/30/revealed-uk-government-keeping-files-on-education-critics-social-media-activity
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/21/uk-government-keeping-files-on-teaching-assistants-and-librarians-internet-activity
That's not good, but I don't see how it's barring people. If you are working in UK education then you have a right to enter and remain. A sovereign nation has the absolute authority to deny entry to anyone who does not have the right to enter, but we should not be happy about the government of a supposedly liberal democracy monitoring speech like this.
On your UK stories, we still have the Data Protection Act in force here. Even though communications are made in public, storing and processing these communications to draw unfavourable conclusions about people is a data controller and data processor activity. This makes it subject to the DPA. The Information Commissioner's Office should be all over this.
Really, it must be hard to find authoritarian thugs these days, with agencies like ICE and CBP snapping them all up.
([Notionally] anonymous because these agencies are customers of my employer and blah blah blah. I dare say if anyone there cares about me they already know my opinion of them.)
... which pseudonym is me? This is one of the few boards I frequent where I use my own name. And if they are going after immigrants, visitors applying for visas, etc., it's going to be a tougher nut to crack than tracing in-country IP addresses and logons. Particularly if the subjects are highly motivated to appear as though they are benign, pro USA types with 'clean' social media records. I have multiple IDs on several boards. And at times, I even have some fun getting in arguments with myself.
I hope GOST has a better track record than some of the other contractors they've used for doing stuff like background checks. The ones that can't even get information right when it's in my best interest to be honest and accurate on an application. (That's "Montreal", not "Montgomery, Alabama". Quit hitting the Enter key on the first item in a pull-down menu.)
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2026
